


The space between us

by Dissypoo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Fluff, HS Gift Exchange 2013, HahaI'msorry, I should be banned from trying to write Dirk, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissypoo/pseuds/Dissypoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxy is upset, so Dirk travels over miles of ocean water to go cheer her up.</p><p>(This is literally the first fanfic that I'll ever be writing and posting to another site, and this is for tumblr user sketchfanaticaj for the 2013 Homestuck Gift Exchange! I hope you like it! I've got literally no experience writing Dirk or Lil Hal so please forgive that XPP<br/>Also just a warning, I made an account on AO just for this, so I apologize that there is no fancy formatting or colored text!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The space between us

It was one of _those_ days. One of the days Roxy chose not to drink, a day of sobriety to face her situation and to embrace the horrible truth of it all. A day where she could just cry about having never really met her mother, who was technically only her ancestor, but she so desperately wished that such an amazing woman and writer were her actual mom. A day where she could be frustrated and angry with the Batterwitch having destroyed so much and still keep reaching to destroy more and more. 

She needed to talk about it and vent it out to someone, but she didn't want to bother her friends when they all had their own problems to face. But there was one who would listen when she didn't want to take it to anyone else, and that was AR. Or Lil Hal, as he liked to be called. She messaged Dirk hoping that he was being as elusive as ever and that AR would pick up instead. But when she messaged him, it was one of those rare times when Strider himself answered.

TG: hey lil hal is this u  
TG: i need to talk  
TT: I'm hurt, Roxy. You're messaging me in the hopes of talking to my Auto Responder?  
TT: Am I really that unresponsive that you prefer AR to me?  
TG: no i dont prefer either of u i jsut need to talk and hal is a good listener  
TG: *just  
TT: I'm a good listener too.  
TT: Would you settle for me instead?  
TG: i dont think u really wanna hear bout my sober probs  
TT: Ro-Lal, come on. You sit and listen to my complaints and problems, I'm sure I'll be able to handle listening to you vent to me for once.  
TG: u make it sound like ive never done that b4  
TT: The times you do are rare and in between, though you do make comments sometimes that are akin to it, you never really do more than that.  
TT: So lay it on me Rox.

There is a long silence on Roxy's end, before Dirk finally gets a response.

TG: sorry brb

It was an afterthought to tell him be right back, and he knew her well enough to know she was avoiding telling him what was wrong. But he had a feeling he knew it was an emotional situation at her house among the Carapacian colony, her day to be sober electrically charged with all the feelings she pushed to the back of her mind and covered with a drunken haze like a sweeping dust under a rug. But now that rug was pulled away, and she's forced to see just how dirty the whole mess she left under it. And now she's dealing with that mess, all on her own, because she doesn't want to tell him.

TT: Roxy, I'm going to go to you.

THAT, at least, warrants a response from her.

TG: no dirk u dont gotta do that  
TG: u shouldnt

But Dirk is having none of that, so as he gets his things ready to leave for traveling miles over an ocean, he flips on the Auto-Responder. "Hey, AR, gonna need you to keep Roxy occupied while I head her way." The text that flits across his vision responds in the affirmative, but then goes on to rant at him and question his motives, so he ignores AR in favor of getting Sawtooth and Squarewave's attention. "No time for rapping guys, going to Roxy's. Watch the place and Lil Cal for me." He grabs his rocket board from its spot against the wall, and makes his way up to the roof of his house. The sight of a huge expanse of a seemingly endless sea greets him, and he barely pays the text blocking a portion of his vision any mind. It's from AR to him, and another is the conversation he had been in with Roxy, which AR has taken over. Dirk drops his rocket board to the rooftop and hops onto it, causing it to turn on and lift up to hover off the roof. He leans forward and it shoots off. "AR, which direction am I going?" Lil Hal tells him he needs to shift his direction by 50 degrees, so he does so, heading straight for Roxy's Carapacian colony unit that her house is a part of. 

While he is traveling and will be for quite some time, even at the high speed he's going, he focuses on the conversations he's missed out on. It seems that when AR took over, Roxy had been a bit more forthcoming with venting her frustrations and the things that make her upset, and Dirk finds himself just a bit ticked about that. It wasn't fair at all for AR to be the shoulder for her to cry on, he doesn't even have actual shoulders! Dirk is the actual person of the two of them, why wouldn't she open up to him? Was he really that aloof and unsympathetic that she didn't want to? It makes him stew in thought the whole way there.

When he had left, it had been nearing noon, but the trip had taken him around 7 hours, so now it was getting well into the evening and he was tired. He had taken to sitting on his board a couple hours in, and had brought enough orange soda and snacks to last the trip, and enough for the trip back as well. For his bathroom needs, well. There was only ocean below him, filled with fish piss and crap, it's not like anyone would notice or care if some human waste was added to it. And if they did, it was too late now. During his traveling he had monitored the conversation between Roxy and AR, and Roxy had supposedly gone to take a nap a few hours in. But she was still rather upset, and he couldn't tell if he hoped she was drunk when he got there or not. But there, in the distance he spotted the chessboard-like unit that housed many Carapacians as well as Roxy. Her house was decidedly different from the ones that housed the Carapacians, in that it actually had windows and an observatory. "AR, send Roxy a ping and see if she's up." He doesn't take much notice on the response given, as he's focused on finding which one is her house and speeding to it when he finds it. Once he does, he looks over it. Yeah, she's up and just a bit tipsy as far as he can tell from the response she gave to AR's inquiry. 

Dirk slows down his rocket board and lands it on the ledge of the platform that has what he assumes is her front door, though there is no proof to it it's his only bet. He captchalogues the board and stays true to his namesake by striding to the door and first checks that the door is locked. It's not, and he makes a mental note to scold her for that later, and steps inside. "Roxy, it's me. You really shouldn't leave your door wide open like that." Later was now, apparently. "Rox? You here?" He calls out into the silent house, frowning until he hears the sound of something banging around a floor up. Without hesitation he flashsteps to find the stairs and scales them, at the door to her room in record time. She's just fumbling to get up from where she fell over when he pushes the door open, and she looks up at him rather startled. "Dirky, you came! I din..didn't think you'd show, ya kept a girl waitin'. Das bad mannerrrs!"

His face his a mask of stoic calmness as he walks over to her and helps her to her feet. "Sorry the commute over took some time, but you know. All that traffic." That was.. lame of him, but he found himself at a loss for how he thought he was supposed to help cheer up an emotional girl. Why had he come all this way? She'd been upset and sober before, and an emotional mess while drunk too, but he'd never actually come out to her before. He calculates the causes in his mind, and the conclusion he comes up with is one he's unsure about admitting to himself. He couldn't possibly be jealous of her relationship with AR, she was his friend and AR was just an AI. But for just an AI, he was able to coax her into sharing her feelings with him, something Dirk himself hadn't been able to pull off. Unwilling to admit the alternative, Dirk tells himself that no, he wasn't jealous of their relationship, he was just proving to both himself and to AR that he could comfort Roxy more effectively, as he could actually be there with her in person. "You've been drinking." It's not a question, just a disappointed statement as he eyes the half-empty bottle of whiskey by her bedside. "Did you drink some before your nap?"

Roxy gives him a lazy shrug, giggling a bit airily as she tries to pull away from his steadying arms to retrieve her bottle. His arms tighten around her and keep her there, and she turns her pretty pink eyes up to him. "I drang a lil before my nap 'n then when Lil Hally woke me up I hads'more. Drank." Her eyes light up and she reaches for his shades, and he gently grips her wrists to keep her from grabbing them right off his face. "Is Hal on?? Hiiiig.. hi Hallyyy can you hear 'n see me in there?" Dirk frowns a minute fraction, because even though he was right here in front of her, she was asking for AR. And worst yet, is that his shades are responding by flicking on the text-to-voice application. 

"Yeah, I'm here Ro-Lal, you're looking great. Oh, hold on. It seems Dirk here is getting pissy with me in the chat function." Sending a mental curse at Lil Hal, Dirk gives him a small warning before reaching up and turning him off for the moment. Roxy is blinking rather confused at him, and he can't help but be relieved at that, because she's focusing on him now. He guides her to sit on her bed, and he puts the bottle out of her reach to keep her from temptation before sitting next to her. "Roxy, I didn't travel nearly 7 hours here for you to ignore me and spend all this time talking to AR."

Her brows furrow at that as it takes a few seconds for her fuzzy brain to process, but when it does her eyes widen in surprise and she is quick to shake her head, short blonde curls bouncing with the movement. "Nono Dirky, I wouldnn ignore ya, I waz jus--" Dirk cuts her off with a finger over her lips, and the explanation dies in her throat. He came here to see if she was okay, and she's prolonging it all. She wishes she had her drink and sighs quietly, eyes dropping to the space between them on the bed. He removes his finger from her lips and waits patiently for her to speak. "I waz just.. I wanted a day or part'ta one where I could just key-- be upset. I kinda gave in earlier by drinkin' but 'm only a little tipsy. Can I have it back cuz I kinda wamma-- wanna stop thinkin'." She doesn't look up to meet his shades, because she knows he must be disappointed in her even if it's not clear on his face. She shifts and fists her hands in her bed sheets, and he lays one of his gloved hands over hers. She dares to sneak a peek, and though she can't tell for sure because of his shades, she gets the feeling of sympathy from his gesture.

"You can't, because I want to talk real with you. I know our situation is shit, but it's our lot and we're going to get out of it eventually. I understand it better than any of the others you would bring it to." He stops himself, because she's raised her hand in a call for silence. She turns around on the bed, walking on her knees to grab the pillows and place them all nicely against the headboard so she can lay against them. Patting the spot beside her, she invites him to sit with her. Dirk hesitates for a brief moment, face blank to hide how uncertain he is about all this, before he shifts to sit beside her. Unexpectedly, she drops her head onto his shoulder, and he is still until he gets the thought to put his arm around her and hold her securely to his side. It's surprising comfortable, and he turns shaded eyes to the ceiling.

From the sound of her voice that is slurring less and less, she's coming off her buzz. "Dirky, can we not talk, an just sit here togefer-- together? The company's nice." He can do that, so instead of talking about all the things they both already know and hate, they sit together in the knowledge that even with all that has happened and will happen to them, at least they'll have each other. Dirk doesn't find himself adverse to the idea at all. They sit there for what seems like hours, and when Dirk groggily opens his eyes, his shades inform him it's about 11 in the morning. Roxy is snoring against his shoulder, and his back is cramped from the slouched position they fell asleep in. He finds that he doesn't really mind it all that much, and his arm tightens around her only slightly, before he falls back to sleep. They'd wake up around 1 in the afternoon, and spend the rest of the day together, sober and happy, and maybe a couple more days after that before Dirk returns home.

The exhausting 7 hour trip there was definitely worth it.


End file.
